Old Habits
by galabad
Summary: The war has ended. How does a Repairer adjust to civilian life?


Thanks to mikomi for giving me the idea for the title.  
  
Old Habits  
  
War is over. The Victim threat has been eliminated. The decommissioned GOA and GIS orbit Zion like silent specters from some crepuscular dream only half-remembered. The stalwart defenders of humanity who survived the final battle have gone their own ways, returning to the colonies, friends and family that have beckoned for so long.   
  
However, not everyone has a colony to which they can return. Some of these transient souls have taken to the stars to find their own destiny. Some volunteered to stay on board the vessels they have come to call home in order to keep them in fighting trim in case they should ever be needed again. Others have taken refuge on Zion itself in order to forge a new beginning for mankind.  
  
Many of those who followed this last course were little more than children when they joined the life or death struggle of the Victim War. For them, there has never been a time of peace, a time when they did not need to fear for their lives from an alien menace that threatened the very existence of their species. All they know is the life of piloting or maintaining massive vessels of destruction. Now they face the special challenge of learning to live a "normal" life and finding ways of using the skills honed in a time of war to succeed in a peaceful world.   
  
One such person is a young woman named Kizna Towryk. Once one of the most talented and dedicated Repairers ever known, she now makes her home in a low-rent but spacious apartment in pleasant suburban Greendale. On this particular sunny day (with light winds from the northeast) she made her weekly excursion to the supermarket on the outskirts of nearby Solar City. She disembarked from the bus at the stop on the corner of her block and balanced a heavy bag of groceries in each arm. A dark purple beret, perfectly matching her full-length wool jacket, perched at a saucy angle on her head. Red and gold autumn leaves crunched beneath her sneakers as she made her way to the Fairwelta Arms apartment complex.  
  
She had to pause for a second to catch her breath after lugging her burden up the stairs to the second floor. Upon reaching the door to apartment 210 she noticed the daily Greendale Gazette still lying on the "Bless This Mess" doormat. Sliding her foot under the newspaper, she deftly kicked it into the air and caught it on top of one of her bags. Not wanting to have to set down her groceries to open the door, she kicked lightly at the portal in order to catch her roommate's attention. The only response was a faint, high-pitched keening whine from within. She kicked harder and the whine abruptly stopped, leaving only the sound of far-off chimes tinkling in the light winds from the northeast. Seconds later the door swung open to reveal a young woman with long red pigtails.   
  
"Sorry, Kizna," she said, wiping a sheen of perspiration from her forehead. "I didn't hear you. I was installing the last of the equipment."  
  
Kizna stepped through the doorway and walked into the kitchen area to set down her load. As she did so she glanced around the apartment. An arc welder was set up in one corner while a table saw and various other smaller devices littered the walls. "Wow, you have been busy."   
  
"Yup," Saki beamed. "And to think they were just giving all this great stuff away when the Academy was shut down!"  
  
Kizna doffed her beret and coat and hung them in the walk-in closet by the front door. She ran her fingers through her pink hair and twitched her feline ears, then started down the short hallway to her bedroom. She flicked on the light and a pleasingly soft glow bathed the room. The light pink walls and salmon carpet had a soothing effect for her, and she sat down on the bed for a well-deserved respite. The cat-eared girl kicked off her sneakers and slid on her favorite pair of well-worn pink fuzzy slippers. As she bent down to pull the back of the house shoes over her heels, her attention was caught by a flash of light reflecting off a picture frame on the wall. She turned to face the portrait. It showed Kizna, Saki and three other young women; the late 80's series Repairer Candidates. A smile curled her lips as she remembered the old days of working with the girls on GOA. She leaned back on the bed and wondered how they were doing now.   
  
Her gaze came to rest on a girl with long purple hair who stood a head above the other girls. Kizna knew that Tukasa Kuscha returned home to her family after the war. She and her partner, Yamagi Kushida, were two of the lucky ones who had a family to go back to.   
  
Wrecka Toesing, the almost too-innocent looking girl with the blue hair, moved to a bustling urban colony near sector K-7. If the rumors going around were true, her name would soon be Wrecka Sawamura, although Kizna still had trouble picturing a marriage between Wrecka and her longtime partner Roose. It seemed to her that in that relationship the poor boy would be less of a husband and more of an indentured servant.  
  
Lastly came Ikhny Allecto, the shy young lady with brown locks and glasses. Kizna missed her perhaps most of all, since they were so close during their tour of duty. Aside from Tukasa and Kizna, Ikhny was one of the only three Repairer Candidates to become a full-fledged Repairer, since Saki's partner Clay had transferred to the Observers and Roose never advanced past the Second Troop. Kizna was also worried about Ikhny. When her partner Hiead disappeared during the final battle against the Victim, she grew morose and unresponsive. She acted as though she had lost a piece of herself, although everyone else agreed that she was better off without the cruel abuse that white-haired tyrant heaped upon her.  
  
With a sigh, Kizna pushed herself off the bed. All of this reminiscing about old friends made her recall that two of them were supposed to be coming to visit. She walked back down the hall, past the bathroom and Saki's room, and into the living area where Saki was laying on the overstuffed couch and enjoying an iced tea after completing her work.  
  
"Any word from Zero and Clay yet?"  
  
"Yes, they're still planning to come to dinner tonight." Saki glanced at her wristwatch. "Which means we should really get started on making it." The pigtailed girl disappeared into another room as Kizna entered the kitchen and unpacked the groceries. She was almost finished when Saki returned with a cardboard tube.  
  
"Oh, good, you already made up the recipe," Kizna smiled. She popped the lid off of the tube and slid out a rolled up sheet of blue paper. She and Saki then unrolled the document to reveal a detailed set of blueprints for creating a roast turkey.  
  
"Step one," Saki read, "defrost the turkey. I'll take care of that." She donned a heavy welder's mask and disappeared behind an opaque curtain drawn around the arc welder. Kizna set to work combining breadcrumbs, onions, celery and spices as flashes of light filled the apartment. She had just started cramming the mixture into a metal tube when Saki reappeared with a most decidedly thawed - if slightly charred in spots - turkey.   
  
"Step two," Kizna said. "Remove the giblets." Saki reached under the sink and pulled out a long flexible hose with a crank on one end and a claw on the other. She inserted the claw end of the drain snake into the bird's cavity and turned the crank. Giblets - among other things - spilled from the rear of the turkey. Saki removed the snake and threw it in the sink.  
  
By now Kizna had finished packing the stuffing into the tube. "Now it says we have to thoroughly wash the turkey." Saki placed it in the sink and turned on the faucet. "Are you sure that will be thorough enough?" Kizna inquired.  
  
"Good point," allowed Saki. "Better safe than sorry." The girls carried the bird into the bathroom and laid it on the floor of the tub. Kizna flipped the switch on the water compressor built into the wall and winced as it came to life with a deafening grinding noise. She produced a rifle-shaped power washer from the bathroom closet and connected its hose to the compressor. She and Saki watched the roaster seem to dance around the bathtub as the powerful stream of water pushed it to and fro.   
  
"I think that's thorough enough," Kizna said as she turned off the compressor. Saki picked up the soaking wet bird and gently patted it dry with a towel, shifting skin around where the abrasive water stream had loosened it. "Now we have to stuff it."  
  
Back in the kitchen, Kizna hefted the metal tube containing the stuffing mix she had prepared and loaded it into a grease gun. She shoved the muzzle of the gun into the bird's opening and squeezed the trigger. The turkey swelled as the bread and vegetable mixture filled it to capacity and started to squirt through the neck cavity.   
  
"Now I'll pin it," Saki said. She folded back the bird's neck flap and sealed it with a single shot from the nail gun lying on a nearby table. She bent the wingtips beneath the body and shot another nail into each. She then nailed the bird's ankles together and closed up the cavity with a few more squeezes of the trigger.  
  
"Umm, are you sure that's sanitary?" asked Kizna with a dubious expression.  
  
"Sure! They're stainless!"  
  
Satisfied with Saki's answer, Kizna leaned over the counter to read the next step from the blueprints. "Now we sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and it's ready to cook." She fetched the salt and pepper shakers from the kitchen table and placed a liberal amount of each on the roaster, then placed the bird into a large pan. "Uh oh."  
  
Saki started. "What's wrong?"  
  
"It says here the turkey will take almost three hours to cook in the oven, and the boys will be here any minute now!"  
  
"Shoot!" Saki exclaimed. "We'll have to speed it up." She ran out of the kitchen and returned with two pairs of safety goggles. "Put these on," she instructed Kizna as she donned her own. When both women were properly protected, Saki lit her blowtorch and applied the flame to the bird's side.  
  
Outside, Clay and Zero were approaching the apartment. Clay seemed comfortable in his red plaid flannel jacket, but Zero, wearing only a T-shirt, was shivering a bit. "Man, I wish I had thought to cover up," he said as he knocked on the door marked 210. "These light winds from the northeast are chillier than I expected." When there was no answer he knocked a bit harder. This time the door opened a crack, and the boys decided to invite themselves in.  
  
They rounded the bend to the kitchen and were greeted by the sight of Kizna and Saki wearing goggles and holding a blowtorch to a bloated turkey covered in nails and tiny burn marks and with skin hanging loosely from its frame. "Oh, hi, guys!" Saki shouted over the hiss of the flame. "We didn't hear you come in. Dinner should be ready soon!"   
  
Clay pushed his glasses up his nose, wrinkled in a mixture of disgust and curiosity. "It looks...very interesting," he said. Zero stood in silence, his mouth agape and his eye twitching. "We'll just, um, wait outside until you're finished."  
  
The boys exited the apartment, closing the door behind them. "We can't eat THAT!" Zero exclaimed. "I've never cooked a turkey before, but I'm pretty sure that they did NOT do it correctly! We'll have to go out to a restaurant."  
  
"We can't do that," Clay responded. "They girls may not be gourmets, but they obviously put a lot of effort into...attempting to make us a home cooked meal. If we refuse to eat it, it will hurt their feelings."  
  
"If we DO eat it, it will hurt our stomachs! I don't want to wind up in a hospital!"  
  
"It just so happens that I planned for this eventuality." Clay reached into his jacket and produced a cloth bag closed with a zipper. He opened it and showed Zero its contents: antacids, bismuth and all manner of remedies for stomach ailments. "Always be prepared," he said with a wink, patting the bag inside his jacket.  
  
From inside the apartment, Kizna's voice called out that dinner was served. Clay and Zero both winced, then slowly turned towards the door. Filled with dread as if they were heading for their own executions, they trudged through the portal to meet their fates. 


End file.
